


he nevermore returns

by astroturfwars



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, merman au, mythology is clearly not my strong point but it's fun to make up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:09:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astroturfwars/pseuds/astroturfwars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(That night Haru wakes standing knee-deep in ocean water, and he stares up at the full moon until it burns whiter than the sun. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	he nevermore returns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [i-want-the-honda](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=i-want-the-honda).



> Title taken from The Odyssey. 
> 
> This was a lot of fun to write, even though I had to twist what I found on mermaid/siren mythology to make it fit (but then again that's the whole purpose of an AU, so I'm gonna run with it). I also got to wax poetic a fair bit, so that was fun too. 
> 
> For i-want-the-honda's Secret Santa gift! I hope you like it!

Haru wakes with sand crusted into his skin and an ache in the center of his chest.

He blinks his surroundings into focus, though he's sure he knows where he is even with his eyes closed. The sound of waves on the shore is as familiar as a well-loved relative, doused in perfumes of sand and salt, and Haru is not sure if he should be comforted or disturbed. 

He's never sleepwalked before, and he's usually a sound sleeper unless there's something on his mind. Lately he's been happier, less conflicted--Rin is back, Rin is smiling and laughing and _swimming_ \--, and the only thing on his mind has been how troublesome school manages to be even as the term draws to a close. School aside, Haru would say this is likely the most content he has been in years, if he were to think about it (which he doesn't, because he doesn't quite feel up to figuring out _why_ ; instead he allows himself the prickly, swelling warmth that comes with Rin's smile and doesn't question it).

Haru shakes himself awake, remembers with relief that it is a Sunday, and writes this incident down to sheer weird chance. 

\--- 

Rin meets them after school most days in an outfit that couldn't have taken less than ten minutes to assemble, and Haru is fairly sure it's meant to make up for the hint of nervousness that still lingers in his smiles. He knows no one is supposed to see it, the way Rin hesitates for a fraction of a second sometimes as though reevaluating his reaction before he responds to Nagisa's teasing, but Haru does; he supposes it's part of the way they seem to understand each other even though they shouldn't (against the odds, really, against the current). He doesn't say anything, because he's done enough intervening on Rin's part to last him a lifetime (though he'd do it again, every time), and besides Rin seems fine, if not a little tired. 

The tiredness is more evident; it shows when Rin blinks slow and heavy, lashes falling like curtains, and Haru wonders if he's been up too late recently. Haru knows he has; ever since that first morning he's sleepwalked to the beach more and more frequently as the full moon draws close. 

\-- 

Rin seems different as of late.

It's not something drastic or frightening, because Haru would have been able to pinpoint it easily. It's not anything fundamentally different, it's just...

It hides in the slender length of Rin's neck, still pale for all the running he does outside; it is secreted away in the soft rosy bow of his lips and the way they stretch and curve when Rin speaks or smiles or laughs. It's just beneath the way Rin seems to glow if Haru lets his mind wander, like glittering foam on a cresting wave catching the light. 

He's beautiful. 

And, yes, of course he is; Rin was the cute one growing up, the first to successfully rig puberty to his advantage, the first to grow into his skin and wear it well. Haru has always been able to appreciate the sharpness of Rin's collarbones and the muscles that swell around them as tools of the trade, but this is...this is different.

Rin is beautiful like the ocean at high noon or low midnight, a deep and unnamable beauty whose viewing fee is paid in sorrows. He is beautiful in the same way that an oncoming storm is regal and exciting, because for all its danger it is still a force of nature above all others. Rin looks like a storm brewing at sea, like a whirlpool at whose edge Haru circles, unable to steer himself out.

Rin is beautiful, and Haru trembles when they touch. 

\--- 

Haru stops seeing Rin at night. 

Everything is okay. Better than okay, even; Haru would call it _good_ most days, when Rin lets Nagisa coax him into laughter and the two of them poke fun at Rei while Makoto watches them, jumping in to moderate when Rei's sputtering turns incoherent. Haru allows himself a small smile and wonders if this is the way things would have been years ago if Rin had never left; maybe it would be his arms wound tight around Rin's neck instead of Nagisa's, or maybe it would be Haru whose words Rin accepted without scrutiny instead of Makoto.

But Rin smiles for him, touches him like he did when they were kids, lets Haru get under his skin the same way Rin gets under his, and Haru thinks that's enough. 

Everything is okay, and these small comforts are enough. 

Things stay that way until the full moon. 

It happens on an otherwise uneventful Friday night. They meet that evening for dinner--the Iwatobi boys and their plus one, who is becoming more of a permanent fixture every day--and end up staying out much later than expected, talking more than they eat. Nagisa is in good form, which means Rei is teased so mercilessly that he taps out around nine o'clock.

The air is cool and a little damp, reminiscent of clear afternoons on the beach, and Haru pauses to breathe it in. Moonlight filters through Haru's closed eyelids, the shadowy latticework of veins and thin skin a flimsy barrier between him and the lunar glow throwing the streets into blue-and-white relief. 

"Haru."

The ocean murmurs in his ears, whispers his name in those centimeters between the sea and the sand just before the waves break, and Haru jerks out of his reverie with a shiver. 

Rin is looking at him, a bemused smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, and Haru wonders if he's ever truly seen Rin before. And there's no way, Haru decides, somewhere beneath the fog rolling in over his mind; there's no way he's ever really looked at Rin before this moment, because if he had he never would have stopped. He never would have been able to look away from the shadow that pools in the sharp divot of Rin's collarbones, nor the way they crest up at his shoulders like the points of rocks upon which ships dash themselves to pieces. Had he never before seen the way Rin's fingers reach for him in the same tantalizing way a sandbar would call to a tired swimmer swept out to sea? Had he overlooked, all these years, the hurricane stirred to life by the slow sweep of his dark eyelashes? 

Haru aches, acutely, to take Rin into his arms and press him so close that he can no longer tell whose breath is whose. He wants to soothe away the sadness that lingers, tenuous and nearly invisible, on Rin's brow; he would make it his own if he could only shake the feeling that it welled up infinitely somewhere beneath Rin's skin. 

"Haru," Rin says with a voice like lost seagulls crying, "are you coming?"

Haru doesn't trust himself to speak, isn't sure his voice won't break under the weight of longing that settles heavy and confusing on his shoulders. He nods instead, trailing along after Rin like so much seaweed waving in the current, and tries to breathe.

From that Friday on Haru makes his exits before nightfall, unable to stand firm in the face of Rin and the sorrow he wears like an ethereal mantle even when he smiles. 

\-- 

(That night Haru wakes standing knee-deep in ocean water, and he stares up at the full moon until it burns whiter than the sun. ) 

\-- 

Two weeks after the full moon Haru wakes on firm sand, just damp enough to tell him he's closer to the ocean than usual. He spits grit from behind his lips, careful not to rub at his eyes (he figured that out at the waning of the last full moon, and he knows better than to make that mistake again), and contemplates gargling a mouthful of saltwater to rid himself of the odd combination of sand and morning breath.

The only reason he sees anything at all is that he's already half-turned toward the water. 

It's quick enough that it could be a trick of the light, really. Haru sees a tail, bigger than anything he's ever seen on a fish living in the shallows, maybe as long as his own legs, scales spraying reflected rainbows like a dolphin would water. And as the tail disappears below the waves, something else rises up: broad shoulders, skin tight with the swell of muscle, a head crowned by what could be, from this distance, silky red-violet seaweed. 

Haru teeters on the edge of recognition but does not fall; instead he sits at the edge of the ocean as the ache in his chest tightens again, wondering if the key to relieving this pressure was somewhere beyond the shoreline. He sits like that for long minutes, half-thinking and half-just being, digging his toes into the sand until the sea rushes up to greet him like an eager old friend. 

In the end, Haru rinses a familiar name from his mouth with seawater and walks home barefoot. 

\--- 

The days are a little easier than nights, and Haru finds Rin's presence more bearable as the full moon wanes. Haru still carries that ache with him like so many stones in the pit of his stomach, heavy and rolling inexorably toward Rin's own personal field of gravity. Haru is sure he has one of his own, completely separate from that of the world itself; how else could it be that Haru trembles down to his bones whenever Rin comes too near, overcome with the desire to touch and hold and revere? 

Haru keeps his distance as much as the ache allows. When Rin is out of sight it's not as bad, but those days are becoming few and far between; he finds himself spending more time with Rin than he'd ever considered possible (as much time as he used to spend thinking about Rin, waiting for him to call), and he knows he should mind. He knows he should be protesting, should be at least pretending that he still holds Rin at arm's length and only lets him closer when Rin presents a challenge. But he can't; not when nowadays he is as comfortable around Rin as he is in the water, and especially not when Rin smells like chlorine and salt and warm exertion (Haru doesn't like the heat, but he finds it tolerable--soothing, even--when it radiates from Rin's skin like the sand on the beach at early noon). It would be more trouble than it was worth, Haru thinks, to pretend that he isn't inexplicably drawn to Rin and the deceptively somber set of his shoulders, the way the wind seems to move in time with his breath; he has spent so long stuck in their past that to stay there would be a waste. So Haru lets their relationship evolve, tries to keep it separate from the ache that throbs persistently whenever Rin (looks at him, touches him, smiles, laughs, sighs) is near. 

Haru knows, on some instinctive level, that something about Rin is not quite right. He knows it has to do with the tightness of his chest, with the ethereal glow Rin wears like a second skin, with the way he keeps waking up on the beach when he can't remember sleepwalking before Rin came back. But he can't quite piece it together, beyond figuring he's maybe got a rather persistent cold. Whatever it is isn't affecting his swimming or his relationship with Rin (beyond, of course, the primal urge to soothe and care for and _take_ ), so it's not a pressing issue. 

Haru feels his reluctance wear down day by day, feels his tenuous friendship with Rin strengthening atop a foundation of memories and old wishes, feels the aching pain in his chest when Rin's smile (shyly, more often than not) comes his way. Haru feels these things like he feels the water, with mind and body both, and he wonders if he has learned to (accept) change. 

\-- 

Haru wakes with a creaky gasp.

The ache in his chest is tight as a clenched fist. Haru's ribs groan under a pressure that seems more physical than mental, clutching desperately at his lungs, and he knows, instinctively, what he needs: the rush of the ocean echoes in his ears like the fading notes of a melancholy serenade, drawing him as does the tide.

Haru is out of his house before the burn of salt leaves his nose.

He finds himself used to this walk to the beach, although he knows it should not seem familiar. His feet, still in house slippers, know the best way; his body pulls him through side streets, splashing through deep puddles of moonlight, until sand makes his footing unsteady and he has to take off his slippers to run to the water. 

It is quiet in the only way the ocean can be quiet: the air is a slow static hush, moving cool and low over the steady whispering pulse of the tide. Haru breathes it in, revels in the breeze caressing his scalp, drops his slippers and sheds his shirt before he shuffles into the surf.

_Come_ , the wind and the sea and the full moon whisper, choked by tears. _Come to me, Haru._

Haru keeps wading, walking against the flux of the tide until the motion begins to draw him out in accordance with the ache in his chest. It lessens as he goes, and he knows--he _knows_ , at the primitive base of his brain--that he is moving toward an answer. He closes his eyes against the splash and--hell, he doesn't know where he's going anyway--moves by feel, letting the voices in his ears guide him. 

_Haru_ , they say again, rougher now, sweet and sad, and then--

"Haru?"

It sounds like wind and sea and moon, like thousands of years of longing and hundreds more of lament, like four years of fresh regret atop those still, but it looks like Rin. It _is_ Rin, even if he looks more like a lunar mirage than a teenage boy, and he's swiping brusquely at his eyes as though he can't believe Haru is here either. 

"Rin," Haru says, his own voice hoarse and unseemly in the face of the music dripping from Rin's lips. "Rin--"

Rin is a curve of silver above the water, back melting into what couldn't be anything but a tail scaled platinum like armor made of moonstone, before he takes off. 

He's fast, but so is Haru, and Haru is spurred on by promises kept and broken both as he launches himself after Rin.

\-- 

Rin stops at a sandbar, eyes wide and wild, his mouth an anxious toothy slash beneath flared nostrils. He looks hunted, and the ache in Haru's chest renders him breathless in a way hours of swimming would not. 

"Rin," Haru says, finding his footing at the far end. Water laps lukewarm up to his breastbone, the motion nervous and quick, and he wonders if, for the first time, he is less at home in the water than someone else. 

Rin's tail sways beneath him in jerky, continuous beats, its form distorted by distance and the rippling of the water, and Haru wants to see it up close. He wants to see Rin up close, to touch him, to talk him out of the distress turning him sharp at the edges; but for now they are both a magnetic north, and Rin moves away when Haru wades closer.

Haru knows this sensation like he knows the buoyancy of water; this ripping, draining feeling is _loss_ , pure and simple, and it echoes inside his skull like an alarm horn. The ache flares up, wrapping stinging tentacles around Haru's throat, and Haru speaks because he can't bear to drive Rin away (again, never again, not again). 

"Rin," he repeats, "Stop."

"What do you want?" Rin asks, hoarse. Even grating and tight with nerves his voice curls in Haru's ears like a beckoning finger, and Haru can't suppress the shiver it elicits. 

"It's okay," Haru says, because he doesn't think he can put what he wants from Rin into words. "Just--talk to me."

The tip of Rin's tail breaks the surface for a brief second as he turns himself in a circle, one hand in his wet hair. Haru knows he shouldn't be finding it endearing, but he does anyway and he can't help but wonder how long it’s taken Rin to develop this habit. 

Rin draws his attention back upward with a scowl and bites out, "What d'you wanna _talk_ about? The fact that I'm a fuckin' _mer_ maid?"

"Yes."

Rin's shoulders slump, and he sighs in a way that makes Haru think that a tsunami has swelled to life on the other side of the world. "Are you gonna leave? After I--because I'm not..."

His sentence devolves into a series of frustrated curses, and Haru sighs. 

"No," Haru says shortly. "Come here." 

Rin looks like he wants to protest, but Haru levels him with a flat look that he is sure conveys the fact that he's not in the mood to entertain them. It serves his purpose; some of the fight evaporates from Rin like so much water on hot sand, and he meets Haru halfway across the sandbar. 

Rin meets his eyes, and Haru does not like what he sees there: defeat, acceptance, resignation, all too familiar and yet still out of place. Haru wants the fire that burns just below Rin's skin, the heat that would set the water around them to a boil and leave them blinded by steam. He wants the Rin that never settles and never lets him settle, the one who would never put up with being ordered around regardless of the situation. He wants the Rin who held him close after winning the relay and cried on his shoulder, and he will not accept anything less.

Rin asks, looking somewhere past Haru's shoulders, "What do you wanna know?"

Everything. Anything. _You_.

Haru knows he has to start somewhere. He asks, "When?" 

"Four years ago." Rin's voice is as quiet as sand giving way under Haru's weight, leaving him disconnected.

"That's why," Haru hears himself say, though he all he can see is the glimmer of Rin's scales as the light filters through the water. 

"Yeah," Rin says roughly, "That's why. And I--I wanted to tell you, when I came back, but I--we only ever raced, and I didn't--I didn't know how to tell you, so I just..."

"Idiot," Haru says, because Rin _is_ , honestly, amazingly obtuse for someone who's also so smart. He had spent months waiting for Rin to call, wondering when he would come back--something like Rin being a _mermaid_ would have been nothing more than a pinky promise shared under covers past bedtime. 

"I didn't fucking know! All I knew was that I was fucked up, okay, and I didn't know how to tell you something I didn't understand. So yeah, I'm an idiot, laugh at me, whatever."

Rin's face is anger and fear, settling on his brow and the lines of his mouth, and beneath them is the compelling sorrow that had seemed so enchanting under the full moon. The need to comfort and take still flutters eagerly under Haru's breastbone, ready and at attention, but he fights it down with even breaths.

"I won't laugh at you," Haru says, because he never has and he never will. And then, even though it's painfully obvious already: "I'm here." 

"You're only here because I called you!" Rin shrills. His mouth is a sharp downward twist and tears are beading in his eyes, threatening to fall, and Haru sometimes wonders if Rin ever remembers their promise at all. "I'm a _siren_ , Haru--d'you know what that means?"

"Yeah," Haru says, because he's learned a few things about mythology in class. He knows sirens are something straight out of a legend; he also knows they live in water, which he had envied (so childishly, he thinks, looking back on it) at the time. Beyond that... 

Rin snaps, "Don't be an ass. I'm saying the only reason you're here is that I _called_ for you--I sang for you because I'm a fucking idiot and I couldn't-- _not_ \--"

"Rin." Haru reaches out, slow motion made slower still by the drag of water, and takes Rin by the elbow. He can feel Rin trembling even through this single point of contact, warm and taut under his fingers, and this is not enough; he wants to pull Rin against his chest and still him with the steadiness of his own body. 

Certainty stiffens Haru's spine, fortified by affection, and he tugs Rin close enough to catch him around the waist. Haru's fingers settle in the dimples at the small of Rin's back, only centimeters from the hard swell of scales. At this distance (close, so close, not close enough) Rin has nowhere to look but Haru's face; his gaze is nearly tangible as it skims the length of his jaw, flickers up and over his lips, rides the curve of his cheek and forehead before he finally meets Haru's eyes. 

The ache tightens around Haru's heart, and for a brief second he thinks it might burst. 

"I would've come anyway," Haru says, hoping against hope that Rin understands what he's trying to say. It would be so troublesome, so time-consuming, so _embarrassing_ to tell Rin that he'd worked his way into Haru's heart four years and a few short months ago, as an overeager boy with a bright smile and the momentum to tear Haru's defenses to shreds; it would be even worse to tell him that Haru had been hard-pressed to get Rin out of his head even when he seemed like nothing more than a pissy, complex teenage boy. "Regardless."

Rin sniffles, trying to blink back tears, and says, "What the hell?"

Of course Rin's romantic side would've taken the day off precisely when Haru needed it. "I would've come anyway. Even without the call."

"You never would've known!"

Haru rolls his eyes and says dryly, "I've been waking up at the beach every few nights for the past month. You've always got sand in your hair. I'm not an idiot."

Rin turns a lovely shade of red, his skin strawberry pink across his cheeks and nose where he isn't moonlight pale. Haru's heart skips a beat. 

"And you didn't _tell_ me?" Rin sputters, forcing a weak scowl. "Great, thanks, ass--"

"Not the point," Haru interrupts. 

Rin's mouth works soundlessly, and Haru wants badly to kiss him until the only reason his lips move is to respond to the pressure of Haru's own. But there are other more pressing issues, like the fear and doubt that still shine in the tears in Rin's eyes, and those weigh heavy and cold on Haru's heart in contrast to the heat pooling southward. 

Haru says, simple and concise and true, "I won't leave you alone."

_Not again._

Rin's eyes go wide and wider still, his teeth gleaming where his mouth has fallen open, and no one should look this delicately beautiful while making such a ridiculous face. But that's Rin, Haru thinks, ridiculous and beautiful, and Haru cannot let him go again. 

Haru can tell Rin wants to protest; it's all over his face, in the way his mouth clicks shut as he swallows hard. The muscles in his forearm tense when Rin clenches his fist, but he keeps silent for a few slow, strained seconds. 

Rin's eyes are the color of the veins that run dark through cherry blossom petals when he meets Haru's gaze, and Haru quakes like the earth in the face of a tsunami. 

"Promise?"

Each promise strung between them is like wire between tin cans, a new opportunity to do what they had not done when they were younger and fresher and sweeter: to open their hearts, if only a little, to a cocky smile or a petulant pout. Their relationship is a balancing act; they both stand barefoot on a thin rope, teetering back and forth, reaching for something--for anything (for _you_ )--to steady themselves.

"Yeah."

Rin's smile is bright as the curve of the moon. The flutter of a fin brushes Haru's ankle. 

The ache in Haru's chest gives way (to a promise, to love, to Rin). 

\-- 

Haru does not understand yet. That comes later, when they’ve given up on making it to class on time and instead swim back to a sunny patch near the shore that Rin begrudgingly admits is his favorite. Rin admits a lot of things: that his father was a siren who fell in love with his human mother; that _of course_ he keeps his legs on land, you idiot, it would be impractical any other way; that (and this takes a lot of hemming and hawing, but Haru’s dry prompting pulls the confession from Rin anyway) Rin first called Haru’s name four years ago and has only sung for him since. 

Haru does not understand, not yet, but he will in time. 

(What Rin does not say is that he is glad that Haru answered his call. Haru knows this anyway, by the shy glances and the smile that curls Rin’s lips, and he is glad too.) 

\-- 

Later still, when Rin is all long legs, when his sweat tastes like the ocean under Haru's tongue, when Haru is deeper inside Rin than he could ever be in the darkest parts of the ocean, Rin beckons for him again. Rin says (in a voice that is love and lust, sixteen and purely human), "Come for me."

Haru does, in every sense of the word. He always will. 


End file.
